Privacy

This year, the media issued by the F.B.I. has begun to address For many American children, going to school means handing over personal data. The Summit “personalized learning” educational tool — a platform for online lessons and assessments that was developed by a charter school network with the help of Facebook engineers and is backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — has been criticized for asking parents to consent to sharing their children’s personal data, including their names, internet activity and grades. Google has vastly expanded its reach into America’s schools as more than half of students use its Gmail and Docs apps, and a majority of mobile devices shipped to schools are Chromebooks. Should the tremendous amounts of data underlying the operation of these kinds of services get into the wrong hands, our children’s futures could be at stake. Concerns over illegitimate sharing of and access to student data have been raised by parent … [Read more...] about Kids Shouldn’t Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education

When the Census Bureau gathered data in 2010, it made two promises. The form would be “quick and easy,” it said. And “your answers are protected by law.” But mathematical breakthroughs, easy access to more powerful computing, and widespread availability of large and varied public data sets have made the bureau reconsider whether the protection it offers Americans is strong enough. To preserve confidentiality, the bureau’s directors have determined they need to adopt a “formal privacy” approach, one that adds uncertainty to census data before it is published and achieves privacy assurances that are provable mathematically. The census has always added some uncertainty to its data, but a key innovation of this new framework, known as “differential privacy,” is a numerical value describing how much privacy loss a person will experience. It determines the amount of randomness — “noise” — that needs to be added to … [Read more...] about To Reduce Privacy Risks, the Census Plans to Report Less Accurate Data

Every time we see a fresh example of how badly our privacy has been eroded by the same tech companies that tout a commitment to protect it, the same reactions pop up. Boycott the service, stop using their products, delete them forever and don’t look back. They’re all valid responses. Then many of us ask ourselves: “What can we do to protect our privacy?” Deleting accounts and giving up on offending services can be good moves. But let’s be realistic: After all, if it’s not one tech giant with all of your data, it’ll probably be another, right? If being overwhelmed by the scale of the problemhuge challenge that requires giant organizations — like governments and corporations — to take the threat seriously and act accordingly, rather than say they’re concerned and promising to do better in the future. Real action on climate hinges on these big players to the point that small personal measures pale in comparison. Yes, … [Read more...] about What We Can Learn About Online Privacy From Climate Change

Timothy C. May, a physicist, polemicist and cantankerous advocate of internet privacy who helped start a movement aimed at protecting the privacy of individuals online, died on Dec. 13 at his home in Corralitos, Calif. He was 66. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner’s office confirmed his death but said that the cause had not yet been determined. As the rabble-rousing leader of a group called the Cypherpunks, Mr. May, in his writings, foreshadowed and influenced many of the concerns about privacy and government control that have come to dominate the internet age. In the one-page Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, which he wrote in 1988, Mr. May said, “Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions.” Much of Mr. May’s writing, incorporating elements of advanced … [Read more...] about Timothy C. May, Early Advocate of Internet Privacy, Dies at 66

New York (CNN Business)Apple CEO Tim Cook wants governments around the world to restrict how much data companies can collect from their customers. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour at an Apple Store in Brussels, Cook pushed for comprehensive privacy legislation. He argued that big-pocketed corporations have created surveillance operations that promote profit over customers' ability to control their own information. "You have more information in your devices than in your own home," he said. "All of this information that is out there is too much. It is just too much. It should not exist." Apple (AAPL) tried but had little success building a digital advertising business. Google, Apple's archrival, has built virtually its entire business around collecting customer data then packaging and selling it to advertisers. Cook said he has no issue with the kind of digital advertising championed by Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB). But he believes some data collection has crossed the … [Read more...] about Tim Cook wants stricter privacy laws